The Technology of “Influence” – Part 5 VHF Radio Modems

Introduction

In my novel “Influence”, the lead character J@ck Tr@de performs various hacking tasks. In the book he spends a lot of time securing his connections, hiding his identity and hiding his location. In this series of blog posts, I’m going to talk about the various technologies mentioned in the book like VPN, the Onion Browser, Kali Linux and using VHF radios. I’ve talked about HTTPS, VPNs, the Onion Browser and Kali Linux so far, now we’re going to discuss VHF Radio Modems.

Very High Frequency (VHF) is a radio band used by both commercial and amateur radio operators (on different frequencies). Often if you see people using small handheld radios then chances are they are using VHF. This frequency band works line of sight and doesn’t require a very large antenna to work quite well. Like any radio frequency you can transmit and receive digital data over the air, just like a cell phone does. You can buy fairly inexpensive VHF radio modems which can be used to connect a computer to the Internet via a VHF radio.

In this article we’ll look at these in a bit more detail and discuss why J@ck finds these useful.

For anyone interested, my book is available either as a paperback or as a Kindle download on Amazon.com:

Why Does J@ck Use These?

In the previous articles we have J@ck accessing the Internet from a coffee shop Wifi using HTTPS, a VPN and the Onion Browser. With all this security, why doesn’t J@ck feel secure? As we mentioned before you want to consider security as an Onion where the more layers you have protecting you, the more secure you can feel. However the good hackers always feel paranoid and worry about being traced. In this case J@ck is worried, what if the NSA, FBI or some other agency can track his Internet usage back to the coffee shop’s wifi?

J@ck doesn’t know if anyone can do this or if anyone is actually looking for him. By having a homeless person plant a Raspberry Pi with a VHF radio outside the coffee shop and then J@ck accesses that via a VHF radio modem attached to his laptop, J@ck can be upto 2 km away from the coffee shop, as long as he has line of sight.

This way if the people in the black SUVs show up, J@ck can see them, be warned and escape. Most importantly then he will know someone is looking for him.

The downside for J@ck is that each layer of the security onion adds overhead and latency that slows down his Internet access. With all this security in place J@ck can only access the Internet very slowly.

Strictly speaking to use these frequencies you should have either a Ham or Commercial Radio license. But then if you follow the license rules, you need to identify yourself every 30 minutes, and J@ck is certainly not going to do that. In the scheme of things, J@ck considers the penalties for illegally operating a radio, the least of his problems. There are radio modems for UHF and 900 MHz as well, J@ck could use these as well. As long as the radio is cheap enough to be disposable.

Can the NSA Catch J@ck?

If the NSA can trace J@ck’s Internet traffic back to the coffee shop. Perhaps via a compromised Tor exit node and a compromised VPN, then what can they do?

If the NSA suspect J@ck is using a VHF modem, then rather than sending the SWAT team into the coffee shop, they could have three vehicles with radio direction finding equipment move into the area quietly and then they could triangulate J@ck’s true location from the emissions from the VHF radio attached to his laptop.

J@ck’s hope is that they wouldn’t do this the first time, so if the G-men do show up at the coffee shop then he would assume they would either find his Raspberry Pi/Radio Modem or guess that he was doing this and then use the radio vans the second time.

J@ck also limits his time at each coffee shop, so that the Feds have less time to set this all up and trap him.

Summary

Catching hackers is a game of cat and mouse. Since J@ck is the mouse he wants to be as elusive as possible. VHF modems are just another tool to make it harder to trace back to J@ck’s location and catch him.